Memory Lane
by endsoftime
Summary: Cuddy and Wilson sharing stories after their conversation on the deck at the conference and the unpleasant realizations that come of it. Spoilers for S6E7 Known Unknowns. Cuddy/Lucas, implied House/Wilson
1. Chapter 1

Hey-O. This is just a little ditty, a sort of missing-scenes thing from S6 Episode "Known Unknowns." Enjoy!

* * *

Wilson's warming little chuckle had the triple-fold effect of making both Cuddy and Rachel smile, but also of finally casting off the last, uncomfortable dregs of a conversation way too somber for such a nice, mild autumn afternoon.

"So, he really said all that to you?" he asked, still grinning, and Cuddy sighed when she knew he wasn't trying to backtrack.

"Yep. Had never even seen the guy before. I don't think he knew my name by then, and he just…rattles off my entire psychosis, just by glancing at my class schedule!"

Wilson broke into slightly louder snickers, brown eyes creasing with mirth, and it struck Cuddy how very infrequent that look had been in the last few years. She felt sad she hadn't noticed it until then, and wondered what that said about her priorities. Rachel's soft cooing floating up just then on the gentle breeze seemed like answer enough.

"Sounds just like House."

Cuddy nodded, smiling fondly, if a touch remorsefully, and bounced Rachel slightly in her lap. "He was…not nice, necessarily. But he wasn't unkind; mostly just teasing. He didn't really take any notice of me. I didn't follow him around; plenty of other undergrad groupies doing that. I just…cleverly contrived it so we were in the same hallways together, or at the same parties. He thought he orchestrated the whole thing; didn't know I'd been planning on cornering into a conversation since I met him."

Another, softer laugh, and Wilson sighed. "Yeah. The most successful way to get House to do anything is to let him think it's his idea."

_Ain't that the truth_, she though wryly, thinking back on countless manipulations for paperwork, patient cases, clinic hours. She glanced back up at Wilson, and they shared the same thought: _The first Vicodin detox._

They both smirked at each other, mutual grim amusement at the ironies of life.

"So," she said suddenly, not wanting the conversation to derail back into depressing matters, "how did you meet House?"

Which could, depending on definition, be considered a depressing matter.

Wilson blinked, as though the idea of _meeting_ House for the first time was a foreign one.

_Must have been a while ago, then_.

"When did I meet him?" he asked, befuddled.

"Yeah," Cuddy said breezily. "Everyone in the hospital knows you two are friends, though no one knows why," and he snorted again in amusement. "But I don't think anyone's ever found out how you first met. It just seems like you guys have always known each other."

Wilson grins a bit mischievously, eyes watching some conference-goer move about behind Cuddy's chair. "No, there's definitely a 'Before House' era in my life, though it's kind of hard to remember much of the details."

Cuddy smiled, and Rachel gurgled happily, reaching a chubby hand up to pull playfully at a stray strand of hair.

"It was…actually, it was at a medical conference," he started, eyes widening, as though the connection hadn't occurred to him yet. "In New Orleans, some years ago. I was just out of med school and had barely snagged a residency in Baltimore. I'd also just been served the papers by my first wife."

He gave her a look and a bleak sort of grin, and she had the decency to wince in sympathy. It's usually in bad taste to talk to other women about habits of infidelity, but she knew James, and she knew it was something he'd never forgiven himself for, and never had found amusing, like some assholes do.

"I carried them around with me," he went on, "the papers, in the envelope they came in. I didn't open it. I knew what they were, but I just carried it around with me the whole day after I got it. Well, the last panel got done around four, and I figured it was as good a time as any to start drinking my sorrows away. So I walked into some random bar in the French Quarter, where I figured there wouldn't be a whole lot of people from the convention, because I really didn't want to talk about anything to anyone, and I just started hitting the bottle. I'd probably been there an hour, and the whole time, there was this guy in the corner of the room at a jukebox, playing the same. Damn. Billy Joel song. For an hour."

Cuddy laughed, seeing how even now the mere memory of it made him shudder in irritation. He grinned a little, then went slightly pink, rubbing the back of his neck and possibly even shuffling a foot; hard to tell, with the deck table between them. Cuddy couldn't help but smile; he'd always been slightly too cute when he was bashful.

"And I…well, I guess it was a lot of things: the convention, the alcohol, the divorce papers, the everything. I snapped. I walked up to the guy, told him to knock it off, and he said something, I don't even remember, but I lost it. Grabbed the nearest glass and flung it at the wall behind him, right into an antique mirror. Then of course a brawl breaks out, and the whole place erupts in chaos, and before I know it the police have been called and I'm being cuffed, processed, and charged for damage to private property, inciting a riot, and assault. The assault charge was bogus, but before I even had a chance to argue it, I was in a holding cell with some biker guy who, according to his bicep, was named Thunder."

Cuddy laughed outright at that, quickly moving her hand over her mouth when she realized how loud she'd been, but unable to stop vibrating with it for a few minutes. Rachel squealed with delight, waving her hands around, and Cuddy couldn't get the image of jail-bird Wilson to match up with the embarrassed and mildly chagrined man averting his eyes in front of her. It was utterly hysterical!

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" she chanted as she tried to catch her breath. "It's just…you? Got arrested?!" And she fell out again for a few minutes, the redness quickly enveloping James' face only adding to the hilarity.

"Yeah, well…" he muttered, but really had nothing to say in his defense.

When she finally thought she had herself under control, Cuddy sighed and said, "I'm sorry, really. That was just…God!" Pause to snicker a few times, reel her self-control back in. "So, I take it the guy at the jukebox was House?"

Wilson grinned a private, knowing grin. Apparently someone had asked that before.

"Nope. He was the random stranger who turned up at the police station about an hour later and bailed me out."

Cuddy's mirth died remarkably fast. And she wasn't sure why. She smiled, and made a noise of surprise, and Wilson kept on with the story, whatever was left to be heard, but Cuddy wasn't listening much anymore. She wasn't sure why hearing that had filled her with such a weird sense of futility. Of inevitability.

Didn't know why it should affect her at all, much less so dramatically. Didn't know why it should have anything to do with anything. Why hearing that House – of all people – had willingly parted with money for a stranger struck her. Why he had singled Wilson out, out of an entire bar full of people, an entire _conference_ full of people, to take interest in. Why a nondescript, barely thirty-year-old resident from Baltimore, instigating a bar fight had drawn House's attention more completely than her little staged battle with the endocrinology professor had.

Why, after only knowing each other for a weekend, at most, House made more effort to stay in contact with a brown-eyed, brown-haired, soon-to-be-divorced something-stranger. From _Baltimore_.

They'd hung out, talked, spent time with each other, and then _slept_ _together_, all of which lasted maybe three weeks, to a month, and…he hadn't even called. Never sent her a line, never told her what happened. House said he'd always been interested, and Wilson would undoubtedly break his back to point out it only meant House cared about her and her opinion _so much_ he couldn't bring himself to tell her he'd been expelled. And it may be true, it may not, but it didn't really matter now, because she had Rachel, and Lucas, and she'd decided long ago that House wasn't what she needed.

She knew all this. She was happy, she'd made all the right decisions, and she didn't really have any regrets.

But it still hurt to look at this man in front of her, this unassuming, handsomely-bland oncologist, and know that even if she'd never adopted Rachel, had never met Lucas, had never _dated_ Lucas, she still, in all truth and honesty, never would have gotten what she wanted.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey all! Here's a little sequel-ish thing to the original Memory Lane. Follows after Lucas' presence at the conference has been revealed, and Cuddy's slightly less than enthused about the revelation of how House and Wilson met. This is the encounter that follows. There is a possible third installment. Enjoy!!

* * *

She knew it was a bad idea. She knew she wasn't going to hear anything she wanted or couldn't already assume. But it was important. It meant something to her, for some reason. Besides, the closure she'd get would make up for the rest.

That's what she told herself, anyway.

"Why are you here?"

Why indeed?

"I just want you to explain it to me."

"Explain what?" he sniped.

Everything.

"I want--" she stops, breathes, tries to figure out what it is she wants, because she honestly doesn't remember. She sighs. "He told me how you guys met."

And it's such a random, innocuous thing to say, so innocent and unassuming, and she can tell by the completely inappropriate flash of dread through his clear blue eyes that it's anything but. Her worst fears are already confirmed.

Now, it's just a matter of details.

"Why?" she asks, voice slightly hoarse. "Why didn't you call me? Why didn't you ever just tell me what happened?"

He sighs now, eyes angled at the top of the hotel table that separates them. It's dark outside the windows behind him, muted light from the over-cast sky outside making the room look strangely lit-but-not-lit, his face lined and hidden in shadows.

"I didn't…" he starts, stops, starts again, "I didn't want --"

"What didn't you want, House?" she cries, suddenly lost and sounding desperate. "Didn't want to talk to me? Didn't want to make me feel like an idiot, a tramp, a pointless one-night-stand? Or did you just not want me?"

And if her tone develops the slightest little sneer at the end, it's her own business. She's earned the right, by now.

He glowers now, bristling and defensive. "That's not fair, and you know it."

"Oh really? And what, lying to me about your interest is? Making me believe all these years that I actually stood a chance --"

"Yeah, cuz you've been real open about the little boy-toy you smuggled into your hotel room for the weekend."

"That's not the same thing --"

"How is it different!?" he shouts, and he's finally lost his control.

She hates to admit that he's always made her a little nervous when he gets really and truly angry.

They glare at each other; stale-mated in furious, betrayed silence.

"He knew you," she said, after a beat of heavy breathing. "When I hired him, he already knew you."

"Lisa --"

"When I hired you, I hadn't seen you or spoken to you in five years, you were in love, and you nearly died. But he knew you. I'd never met him before, or heard you talk about him, but he knew you. Had known you for years. For all that time you weren't talking to me, you'd met him. You talked to him. You --"

Something's stuck in her throat and she has to stop. It's too much. She can't say it. This is more than she can take, and she got her answers ages ago, but she's still here. Still arguing, still guilting, still wanting, wishing that somehow she could have been part of his life. Like _he_ was.

"How long, House?" She isn't looking at him anymore, but she can tell he's averting his eyes too, morose and probably feeling exactly like she did.

They'd probably never been closer.

"How long what?" His voice was inscrutable.

"How long before you called him? How long did he have to wait to hear from you? A month? A week? A day?"

"Six hours." Prompt, unemotional. Direct. "It would have been five, but my flight was delayed." And of course he bothers to elaborate, because he's a bastard and chooses the worst times to be honest to a fault.

"You called him the second you got home." A broken, jagged whisper. "Why did you call him so soon?"

Some telepathic message passed between them, and they look up at the same time, eyes locking, and it's almost like she can see the answer before he ever says anything.

But he's a bitter, vindictive asshole, so he says it anyway.

"I wanted to see him again. And I knew I couldn't. So I called him."

Says it slowly, and carefully, so she gets every implication, sees all the parallels, and it makes her sick. She wants to hit him. Wants to scream and yell and cry and break things and make him hurt like she hurts, except for the gnawing notion that he probably already does.

None of them can ever seem to get what they want. Even when it's right there in front of them.

And it's more tragic and pathetic than she can really stand, and she has a growing family waiting for her in her room downstairs, with love and understanding and everything she needs.

And she's happy.

Except that she doubts she ever will be. Ever fully be. How can she be, when what she wants and what she needs are never the same thing?

The fact that they're both in the same boat as her just makes her feel more exhausted and sad than is really fair.

"I feel bad for him," she murmurs, when the silence has stretched long and awkward enough.

He gets that guarded, reluctantly-interested look, like he does whenever anyone starts talking about _him_. "Why?"

She shrugs. "Because you ruined that too. Didn't you?"

She decides if he wants to be a bastard, she can be a bitch right back.

He actually scoffs. "And you don't think the fact that he's the King of Denial has anything to do with it?" There's the slightest bit of resentment, but it doesn't seemed aimed in the right place, and she knows she's hit her target.

"Not if it's something he wants. And the way he clings to you now, he obviously wanted it then."

"Get out." Dark and warning and lethal. It's obviously not open for discussion. She isn't surprised. Nothing about _him_ ever really is.

"If that's what you want, fine. I'll go. But you need to know something." The glare she fixes on him could freeze blood. "I may have messed up. I may have handled this badly. I may have hurt you. But before that, I gave everything to you. Cameron gave everything to you. Hell, he always _will_ give everything to you. You're the one that keeps throwing it back in our faces. So if you're alone, House, you've really got no one to blame but yourself."

The heavy hotel door snaps quietly back into place following her angry, stiff march from the room.

He would have preferred it if it slammed.


End file.
